Harvick survives weird, unthinkable

If one ever doubts that full moons somehow have the ability to create bizarre or strange occurrences, look no further than Sunday night's Coca-Cola 600 at Charlotte Motor Speedway.

ben white

If one ever doubts that full moons somehow have the ability to create bizarre or strange occurrences, look no further than Sunday night's Coca-Cola 600 at Charlotte Motor Speedway. On lap 121 of the 400-lap race on the 1.5-mile track, one end of a drive line on a FOX Sports camera high above fell from the grandstands and landed on the racing surface. That meant the long loose apparatus was right in the path of third-place Kyle Busch, who hit it head on at 180 miles per hour and sent it flying. NASCAR red flagged the race for 27 minutes and allowed teams to repair their cars. As one end broke loose and dangled, the rope acted as a whip of sorts with part of it being thrust into the grandstands. Ten fans suffered cuts and bruises from being struck by or dodging the wild snake-like cord. Thankfully, all those injured were treated and released in the infield care center or a nearby hospital. Fox Sports released a statement Sunday night saying it hasn't determined why it broke loose. Company officials were sincerely concerned for those injured and for disrupting the race. "At this time, we do not have a cause for the failure of the camera drive line that interrupted tonight's Coca Cola 600 at Charlotte Motor Speedway, and our immediate concern is with the injured fans," the statement said. "The camera system consists of three ropes — a drive rope which moves the camera back and forth, and two guide ropes on either side. The drive rope failed near the Turn 1 connection and fell to the track. The camera itself did not come down because guide ropes acted as designed. A full investigation is planned, and use of the camera is suspended indefinitely."This camera system had been used successfully at this year's Daytona 500, last week's NASCAR Sprint All-Star Race and other major events around the world. We certainly regret that the system failure affected tonight's event, we apologize to the racers whose cars were damaged, and our immediate concern is for the race fans. We also offer a sincere 'thank you' to the staff at CMS for attending to the injuries and keeping us informed on this developing situation. When we have more information on the cause of the equipment failure, we will share it with you immediately."Drivers parked on pit road for 27 minutes while crews repaired damage to their cars. Many received damage enough to eliminate their chances for the win. Busch received the most damage at the front of his car but eventually fell out with a bad engine on lap 253. Busch thanked NASCAR for allowing all teams a 15-minite period to fix their cars. "I just heard a big thunk on the right-front side tire and thought the right-front tire blew out,'' Busch said. "That's how hard it felt. ... It did have an effect slowing my car down and I could feel it like, 'Whoa, that's weird.' I don't know that anybody has ever seen that. Maybe now we can get rid of that thing."Kasey Kahne said he thought his eyes were playing tricks on him when he saw something strange on the track."I have never seen anything like it," Kahne said. "I came off turn four and I saw it wrapped around Kyle's car and it hit mine and I thought I had to be seeing things because there's no way there could be a cable on the race track. By the time we got to turn one I saw it again and saw Kyle's fender and saw his car go down a little. That's when I knew I wasn't seeing things."Marcos Ambrose suffered massive damage to his Richard Petty Motorsports Ford when the nylon wrapped around the rear end housing. "It was like getting attacked by a giant squid," Ambrose said. "It was just flapping and I didn't know what was going on. I thought it was cords coming out of maybe one of (Mark Martin's) tires or something, but I could just hear it flapping. And then it got caught up in the rear end and I lost my brakes, so it was a nightmare but we got through it. "NASCAR did a great job of actually handling a crisis there because we were hard-done by and they gave us our laps back and we were able to stay in the race and duke it out."Kevin Harvick, a driver for Welcome's RCR Enterprises, won his second race of the season and second-career 600 win at Charlotte. He discovered Sunday night's race was a matter of first surviving the weird and unthinkable before entertaining any ideas of racing for the win. Ben White is a motorsports columnist for The Dispatch.

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